It’s the
single person’s least favourite time of year again – Valentine’s Day.
If you’re
one of the many cupid-haters who curses every time you pass by plush toys and
heart-shaped boxes of chocolates lining the shelves of stores, but secretly
wishes you had a special someone, you may want to consider a few lessons in
love.
A local
entrepreneur has developed a new website to provide just that. Neal Talbot is
president and founder of Attraction All-Star Enterprises, and recently launched
a new website, All Star Dating Tips (www.allstardatingtips.com) to help people
of any age and at any stage of the dating game.
“The goal I
had when I set out to do this was just to help millions of men and women have
happier, healthier dating lives,” said Talbot. “The reason I got into doing
this site, and into the dating industry, was the fact that I had no idea what I
was doing probably four years ago.”
A
journalist by trade, Talbot came back from an assignment in Africa with a
critical and mysterious illness.
“I was down
to about 130 pounds from about 180, ghostly pale, had lost some of my vision so
I had to wear glasses. I just looked awful, and I was afraid that when I got
back into the dating world that I would do just awfully,” he said.
Once he
recovered from his near-death experience he turned to the web for dating
advice, but found most of the material wasn’t very helpful.
“They teach
you how to go after the one night stands instead of actually how to develop
lasting connections with the opposite sex,” he said.
Instead,
Talbot’s free website focuses on educating people about dating, and making the
entire experience less intimidating.
“Dating can
be absolutely terrifying, horrifying when you don’t know what you’re doing
because you do have to make yourself vulnerable to a large extent in dating,
with someone you don’t know, and that especially today seems to be really
difficult for the majority of men and women,” Talbot said.
Even before
becoming ill, Talbot found dating was a hit or miss experience – he never
really had a plan for a date, and after talking to others while doing research
for his site he discovered many had the same approach.
“I can
remember being in Whistler and asking that to a guy and he said, ‘I just get
drunk and hope for the best,’” Talbot said with a chuckle.
Talbot says
he has heard many dating horror stories through his research, and even
experienced a few firsthand, including dates that still wore their wedding
bands and people who “talked as quickly as hummingbirds on speed.”
“The key is
to learn from those experiences and keep going,” he said.
Born and
raised in the Whistler area, Talbot says there are definitely some unique
challenges to dating here, starting with the fact that many people are here for
a good time, not a long time.
“Whistler
is a different beast in that fact that there are so many single visitors, you
get a lot younger crowd … and you tend to get a lot more people that are of an
age where they have absolutely no clue,” he said.
But he
stresses that it is still possible to have a healthy dating life if you’re a
local.
“When it
comes to Whistler, stay out of the bars if you’re looking for somebody… they
did a recent study for Maxim Magazine, and they found that only 0.2 per cent of
people actually find their husbands or wives, or girlfriends or boyfriends, in
a bar.”
Talbot has
managed to secure some impressive advertisers, including large online dating
companies Match.com and Lavalife.com, as well as online retailers like eBay.
Getting
advertisers on board wasn’t difficult, because Talbot says there is actually a
shortage of quality dating information available online.
“Everything’s
just in tiny pieces, so instead of say getting three to five pages of
information on a certain topic, like you do on my site, most sites just give
you four to six paragraphs on a certain topic, like body language,” he said.
“You really can’t develop any sort of skill set out of those few paragraphs.”
But Talbot
says his new site isn’t about making money – he plans to use the income
generated through advertising and the sale of the online e-book to keep the
site up and running.
He decided
to launch his site to the public today, Feb. 14, because he hopes singles may be
inspired to improve their dating skills so they won’t be alone when Valentine’s
Day rolls around next year.
“Valentine’s
Day is the most romantic day of the year,” he said. “But for a lot of people,
especially if you’re single, Valentine’s Day is a day of dread, it’s not a day
you look forward to.”